Difference between Sales and Marketing
Sales and Marketing are two important business tools or activities which are aimed at generating revenue for any business. Although both of these have a common end but they are different stages and the strategies at these stages are different while moving towards the closure of the deal. In simple terms marketing is about introducing the product or a service to the customer in a way that he feels the need for it while sales is about showing benefits of the service or the product over the other products and why and how the deal can be beneficial to the customer.
In most of the organizations sales and marketing are handled by different teams because both of these need different type skills and strategies. These are two different departments but their work is inter-related with each other. If the marketing has been done thoroughly then sales is easier and success rate is higher. Similarly without effective sales all the efforts done by marketing team are waste.
To understand the difference between sales and marketing some of the points have been mentioned below:
- Targeted on smaller groups, sales is an action taken according to the effect of marketing on the target groups while marketing is always targeted at large groups and is focused on educating these groups about the product in way that the sales teams can approach them easily.
- Sales have hardly anything to do with creating awareness about the product but it is about showing benefits of buying the product. Marketing is about spreading good words about the product and making people aware of the product by introducing it in the market and doing research on their requirements.
- Marketing aims at introducing the right product to the right customers while sales is about making the customer believe that the product is for meeting their requirements.
- Most of the times marketing does not involve direct interaction with the consumers while sales involves direct interaction.
- Marketing is a strategy of moving the customers towards sale while sales is tact to sell the product to him.
- Marketing is long term strategy and good marketing has long term effects while sales is all about instantaneous results and reaping the benefits of good marketing.